“You're doin' splendid,” cried Tim, full of admiration.
“I say, Scotty!” said Perkins, coming up and casting a critical eye along Cameron's last drill, “you're going to make a turnip-hoer all right.”
“I've got a good teacher, you see,” cried Cameron.
“You bet you have,” said Perkins. “I taught Tim myself, and in two or three years he'll be almost as good as I am, eh, Tim!”
“Huh!” grunted Tim, contemptuously, but let it go at that.
“Perhaps you think you're that now, eh, Tim?” said Perkins, seizing the boy by the back of the neck and rubbing his hand over his hair in a manner perfectly maddening. “Don't you get too perky, young feller, or I'll hang your shirt on the fence before the day's done.”
Tim wriggled out of his grasp and kept silent. He was not yet ready with his challenge. All through the afternoon he stayed behind with Cameron, allowing the other two to help them out at the end of each drill, but as the day wore on there was less and less need of assistance for Cameron, for he was making rapid progress with his work and Tim was able to do, not only his own drill, but almost half of Cameron's as well. By supper time Cameron was thoroughly done out. Never had a day seemed so long, never had he known that he possessed so many muscles in his back. The continuous stooping and the steady click-click of the hoe, together with the unceasing strain of hand and eye, and all this under the hot burning rays of a June sun, so exhausted his vitality that when the cow bell rang for supper it seemed to him a sound more delightful than the strains of a Richter orchestra in a Beethoven symphony.
On the way back to the field after supper Cameron observed that Tim was in a state of suppressed excitement and it dawned upon him that the hour of his challenge of Perkins' supremacy as a turnip-hoer was at hand.
“I say, Tim, boy!” he said earnestly, “listen to me. You are going to get after Perkins this evening, eh?”
“How did you know?” said Tim, in surprise.